Malala Yousafzai

World Views

4:30 pm

Fri July 19, 2013

Suzette Grillot and Rebecca Cruise discuss the cargo ship stopped in Panama on its way to North Korea with missiles and fighter jets on board, and Pakistani women’s education activist Malala Yousafzai’s speech before the United Nations.

World Views

1:55 pm

Fri July 19, 2013

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) meets with Malala Yousafzai (center) on July 12, 2013. The Secretary-General presented her with a leather-bound copy of the United Nations Charter, which normally is given only to heads of state.

Earlier this week Pakistani Taliban commander Adnan Rasheed wrote a letter to 16-year-old women’s education activist Malala Yousafzai saying he wished the October 2012 attack on her life hadn’t happened.

The letter came shortly after Yousafzai’s July 12 speech before the United Nations, where she said the attack gave her a renewed sense of strength, power and courage.

“The attack on her was not in response to her support for girls' education, but because she was critical of the Taliban,” says Suzette Grillot, the Dean of the University of Oklahoma’s College of International Studies. “He encourages her to come back to Pakistan and pick up her pen in the name of Islam.”

A human rights activist from Pakistan who founded an all-girls school and his 15-year-old daughter who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban have been honored by the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.